Workers and the City: Rethinking the Geographies of Power in Post-socialist Urbanisation

Abstract

In this article, the case of Cluj/Kolozsvar, regional capital of Transylvania, is analysed in order to uncover the geographies of power in which the workers, a category that has often been analytically silenced, have had an important role in reframing the landscape of the city. Principal component analysis is used to clarify the city’s socialist and post-socialist urbanisation processes, and the qualitative data show how the workers appropriated the urban space in a nationalist manner. The workers’ tactics had an important impact, from a relational perspective, on the spatial strategies of the emerging post-socialist middle class.